Did The Earth Move? (2 page)

He was going to come quickly too. She'd felt him make the momentary effort to slow and hold back, but then with a gasp he'd given in and collapsed down against her.

Later, they'd had much slower sex with talking. What Joseph had always called mantra sex. (Except, she wasn't supposed to be thinking about him.)

'So how come you're still single?' she'd asked Nils.

'British girls aren't into vets,' he'd told her. 'Too much exposure to
All Creatures Great and Small
at an impressionable age. They're always thinking about where my hands have been and am I
sure
I've washed them.'

'Yeurgh,' she'd giggled.

'I don't know,' he'd added, a little more seriously. 'Probably just haven't met the right person, yet.'

'I've always wanted to have sex with a Dutchman,' she'd told him then.

'Why?'

'Because you're all so liberal, nothing's supposed to shock you and I was hoping you'd have lots of good ideas.'

'I see,' he said switching positions and explaining that he was from one of the tiny Protestant, Puritan Dutch islands where he went to church six days a week until he turned 19 and left for vet school.

'Ah.'

'But that doesn't mean I haven't got some good ideas and, please tell me you're going to come soon ...'

'Oh yeah...'

'It's almost five o'clock, isn't it?' she asked him now, trying to move her head up from the pillow. 'I really have to go.'

She got out of bed, retrieved her tiny pants and then lay flat on her back on the floor. Raising her hips with her hands, she swung her legs up into the air, then down past her head to touch the floor on the other side.

'What are you doing?!' he asked, sitting up to watch.

'Just stretching out my back,' she said, smiling, looking surprisingly comfortable.

'Isn't that dangerous?'

'The plough? No, not when you've been doing yoga for as long as I have. Since
before
the Nineties,' she added, but then wished she hadn't, she didn't really want to remind him that she was, well . . . call it a few years older than him.

She held the position for several minutes, then unfolded herself and began to pull on her clothes. He asked if she would like to make another 'appointment'.

This was the part she wasn't so sure about.

'I've got a lot on . . . and little people to look after. I really don't know ...' she trailed off.

'Do you want to see me again, Eve?' he asked, from the seriously rumpled bed.

'Yes. I just...'

'Shh!' he held a finger against his lips. 'It's OK. No rush. We'll see how it goes.'

'Thanks.' She sat down beside him and put her hands up against his face to draw him in for a kiss. And to his surprise it was a kiss on the forehead, a slightly mumsy goodbye.

'What does this have to do with things?' He held her left hand in his and put a thumb over the dainty emerald ring on her fourth finger.

'Oh, nothing ... really. Just habit. We split up ages ago ... you know that...' She felt a flush of pink heat up her cheeks, and it annoyed her, making her blush even more: 'But there hasn't been anyone since. So this is ... all new.'

'No rush,' he said again, reassuringly.

'I'm sure I'll tell you all about it.' She shot him a smile, did up her trousers, slid her feet into her shoes and picked up her cardigan. 'But not today.'

At 4p.m., most days of the year, Eve's stint at the office ended, although
work
didn't. She sometimes didn't think work ended until she sank into her bath at 10.30p.m. with a hefty glass of red wine in her hand.

But 4p.m. was the changeover, when Probation Officer Eve powered down the computer, closed the files on the big kids for the day and turned back into Mummy Eve, who did food and homework and bath time, laundry and hoovering and all that other stuff for the next few hours.

And today, Friday, was no different. Lap one, rush to the bus stop and catch the red double decker, which dropped her just a short walk from Robbie's childminder. She always rang Arlene's doorbell in short bursts of three so Robbie knew it was her and came hurtling down the corridor screaming with glee, ready to fly into her arms as soon as the door was opened.

'Hello, bunny,' she said into his hair, as he clasped her fiercely round the neck. Eve and Arlene had their doorstep chat – what they'd done today, how he'd eaten, how long he'd slept – then Robbie climbed into his buggy and they whizzed down the road to collect Anna from her after-school club.

Reunions with Anna were not nearly as gushy. Her tall, fair-haired daughter didn't see them coming in because she was at the table pushed against the wall in the club room, doing her homework, completely oblivious to the chaos going on around her with other kids playing ping-pong and pool, jostling for goes on the Play Station.

'Anna!' the club supervisor had to call several times, before Anna heard. Then she turned, flashed her mother a quick smile, turned back, finished her sentence, her sum, whatever it was she was doing and only then packed her books and jotters away, all neat and orderly, just like a mini executive sorting out her briefcase at the end of the day.

Anna allowed herself to be kissed on the cheek by Eve, but nothing more than that. Then she bent down to kiss Robbie hello, all sweetly condescending and so self-possessed for a nine-year-old.

'So tell me all about it,' Eve said when they were back outside, and the last fifteen-minute stretch home was full of school news and a little girl's gossip.

There was that house, she couldn't help noticing as they walked past, the big one on the corner, shabby and unloved, with the wild garden. Someone had finally put it up for sale.

It was close to 5p.m. when they were at last back at the little two-bedroomed basement flat which had been Eve's family base for over ten years now.

Opening the front door was always such a relief: all three of them loved to be home. Anna rushed to her room and Eve carried Robbie into her bedroom so he could sit on the bed and watch her slip out of the work suit into jeans, a bright top, woolly socks and a decrepit old pair of Birkenstocks. That was when she finally felt like her proper homebody, Mummy-self again.

She took out her earrings, brushed through her hair and tried to feel a tiny bit recharged for the final laps of the day ahead of her: suppertime, homework, Joseph handover, baths and bed.

'What are we eating tonight?' Anna called from next door.

'Soup, salad, bread and cheese,' Eve answered, knowing this was not exactly a break with routine.

'What kind of soup?'

'Carrot and lentil,' she answered, not expecting to hear a groan in reply. This was one of her more popular numbers.

Anna came into the room, dressed in sensible chinos and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. She found her mother's taste for sequined hipsters, splashy tops and bead jewellery hard to relate to.

'How's it going?' Eve asked but before Anna could reply, Robbie somersaulted straight off the bed and landed in a wailing heap on the wooden floor.

Once they'd both cuddled him up and patted him better, Anna replied with an: 'OK, surviving, trying to keep within my own boundaries and not get too involved with all the children stuck in the toddler stage in my class.'

'Hmmm,' Eve nodded, knowing from experience it was best not to get too caught up in a pop psychology conversation with Anna; it would only end with cries of: 'You just don't want to understand!'

Occasionally, Eve would worry if it was normal to have a nine-year-old who was desperate to be a psychiatrist and who spent most of her spare time reading psychology manuals. But, hell, what was normal? Best not to spend too much time wondering about that.

While her youngest children had supper – Robbie breaking all his bread into pieces to float it 'like ducks' on the soup and Anna having to cry because she blobbed the bright orange onto her T-shirt, 'and it will
never
come out' (theatrical wail) – Eve tried to take a call on the kitchen phone from her eldest son, Denny.

'Have you met Tom's new girlfriend yet?' Denny was asking above the increasing kitchen cacophony.

'Yes. Isn't she lovely? I'm cheering from the sidelines,' Eve said because this was beginning to look like Tom's first big romance. He'd always had girlfriends but no-one really serious until now. When she'd met Deepa, just a week ago, she'd seen the thrilled friendship between them and felt so happy for him. And Deepa was lovely: an attractive, intelligent medical student, full of fun – like Tom – but ambitious too, which was interesting because Tom was laid back, never took anything too seriously, was determined to be a carefree, software-designing surfer boy for as long as he could.

'I know,' Denny was agreeing. 'No idea what she's doing with Tom.'

'Denny! He's getting it together,' Eve said. 'His job is working out OK. His finances are improving.' Eve had limitless understanding for her kind, but chaotic, second son.

'But not his taste in clothes,' Denny added.

'Well... maybe Deepa will help him out. It's early days. How about you?' she asked, trying to ignore Robbie's discovery that he could ping soup across the table with his spoon. 'How's work going?'

'Fine. Big job next week hopefully, fingers crossed. And Patricia's well too.'

'Good.' Then Anna took a direct soup hit.

'I have to go,' she said to deafening shouts of 'Mum! Look what he's done!'

'You do,' Denny laughed. 'Give them a cuddle for me.'

'See you soon. Are you OK?' she added quickly.

'I'm fine.'

'OK you two...' She headed to the plastic-table-clothed war zone with paper towels. 'He's still stuck in the toddler stage,' she reminded a tearful Anna.

'Can we have the yoghurt now, Mummy?' Robbie looked up at her with the most heart-winning, charming smile he could muster.

'Yes, yes, just a minute.' She wiped everything and everyone down a bit, then plonked a fruit yoghurt in front of Anna and prepared for the evening debate with Robbie.

'Who have we got today?' Robbie asked gleefully.

She looked in the fridge: 'James, Thomas, Annie or the Fat Controller.' After months of resistance she had finally cracked and bought the Thomas the Tank Engine-themed yoghurts and now she was enslaved. He only ever wanted to eat the Henry one. Really she should just wash out the Henry pot, refill it with normal yoghurt and slap the foil back on. Why did she never remember to do that?

'But I want Henry,' came the little wail now.

'Oh no, Thomas is going to cry.' Eve made sobbing noises into the fridge. 'Eat me Robbie, eat me,' she said in a silly voice.

Anna was rolling her eyes.

Finally Robbie relented and let her spoon the pale pink goo into his mouth.

After supper, she jammed the plates, cups and bowls into the pocket-sized dishwasher Denny and Tom had bought her for Christmas, and went into the sitting room with the children.

She flicked on the lights the room needed even in the middle of the day because it was below pavement level with a green curtain of ivy and clematis over the two small windows.

Eve liked the underwater green effect. She'd decorated with pale apricot paint, a saggy secondhand sofa, bookcases, stained-glass shaded lamps and ropes of white fairy lights. The wooden floor, like all the others in the flat, she had painstakingly sanded, smoothed, nailed down, fillered and varnished herself. There were no curtains on the windows because the trellis of leaves was enough.

Like every other room in the flat, the sitting room walls were covered in all sorts of interesting things: posters, paintings, Denny's family photos blown up, and lots of home-made art – framed bright blue handprints, salt dough trees, painted and glazed, glitter dinosaurs, dip dyed handkerchiefs, even a pink tulle baby's dress in a frame. It was a quirky collection begun way back when Denny and Tom were small.

Robbie hopped onto the biggest sofa and began rearranging the cushions. Eve slotted the Thomas the Tank video into the machine, hit play and lay beside him, curling herself so he had space to sit in the bend of her knees.

Anna unpacked her books and settled down at the table behind the sofa. This way, Eve could help with homework without having to prise herself up again.

The clonky theme tune started up and Eve felt her eyelids hover. She wondered how long she could just 'rest' them shut before Anna had a question or Robbie poked her in the face.

Barely fifteen seconds later, she got her answer: 'What's six times eight again?' Anna asked.

'Well, what's five times eight?' she asked back.

'Forty, so plus eight, forty-eight.'

'Well done. Are you all packed, by the way?' Eve asked just as the doorbell rang.

'Is it Daddy?' Anna's face lit up.

'Better go see.' Eve uncurled from the sofa and caught herself arranging her hair. Oh good grief. And there were the strange tummy flutterings along with the surge of tension Joseph always managed to provoke in her. She wondered if it was going to feel different to meet him today now that she had taken such a big step, had started to see someone else ... properly.

She had never expected maintaining civil friendliness with Joseph to be easy. They had been together for seven years and she had loved him all the way. They'd had Anna together and several years of the kind of happiness you could never, ever regret, but things had begun to fall apart well before Robbie arrived.

In fact, Eve had called it off and moved Joseph out for what surely had to be the final time just a few months into the pregnancy. What had gone wrong? She would only ever explain it as 'He changed', which didn't really begin to describe the whole complicated set of circumstances but made it easier for her to cope with. Now, she considered herself still heartbroken and more than a little suspicious of new men, but determined not to be bitter, and some day to be able to get over it – as Joseph appeared to have done without too much problem.

So here they were: apart, trying to be civil and parenty, trying to ignore all the unresolved, difficult feelings still breaking out between them.

In some ways it had been easier when the father of Eve's two older boys, her husband Dennis, had left. He'd done the melodramatic, clean break, disappearing act. It might have been shocking and hell to adjust to, but at least there hadn't been all this confusion and toing and froing and on-ing and off-ing and having to try and be friends for the sake of the children.

'Hello, Joseph.' She stood up and smiled as he came into the room.

'Hi, Eve.' He did a quick stoop and brush of the cheek kiss. No, despite the afternoon of wild abandon with Nils, there was still a something, a little tiny rush ... a jolt. . . when he did that. It annoyed her so much. And no, it was still hard to keep her eyes off him. But maybe she wasn't alone here. He was tall and muscular slim with dark eyes and thick, black hair. Plenty of women found him a pleasure to look at.

'Hello Jofus,' Robbie was saying from the sofa.

'Hello, buddy, how are you?' He settled down on the sofa to speak to the son he saw so little of. He and Eve had agreed that Robbie would come with Anna on the weekend visits to Joseph's flat in Manchester 'when he was older' but time had passed and so far neither of them had discussed when that would be. Each felt the other should make the offer first. It was just another little fly in the relationship ointment.

Joseph stayed long enough to have a cup of tea and the handover chat: How were Anna and Robbie doing? How much homework should Anna take? What was she reading? And all the time Eve was watching him, noticing all sorts of little, personal things and he was doing the same.

He'd been at meetings in town all day and his dark suit had that soft, perfect cut look to it of criminal expense, but he wore it casually with a black T-shirt and the world's tiniest mobile phone clipped to the top pocket, the ear wire tucked round his collar. He had a new laptop computer. She saw the small, light bag at his feet. No doubt something very sleek and top of the range. He was doing well, turning into a wealthy, successful businessman. Just as she'd suspected ... and hated. She never accepted any child maintenance from him, but made sure he put the money into an account for the children when they were older. She tried not to interfere with his lavish treat buying.

Anna came back into the room with her small overnight bag.

'Are you sure you'll get it into the boot?' Eve asked because she couldn't resist. She couldn't remember what kind of car it was Joseph drove but it was the silliest, shiniest boy-toy ever and she loathed it.

'Miiiiiaaaaaoooow,' Joseph said but smiled at her anyway.

'Any plans for the weekend?' Eve tried out her 'being civil' voice again.

'Loads of plans. We'll have a great time, won't we, Anna?'

'Yeah. Is Michelle around?'

Joseph and Eve felt their involuntary intakes of breath. You could always rely on nine-year-olds to bring on those awkward questions.

'She's offered to make us dinner tomorrow, if you want.'

'Better eat before you go, darling.' Eve knew it was mean and evil and wicked, but she couldn't help herself.

Michelle, Joseph's girlfriend was – and Eve was only going on photographic evidence and what Anna had reported here – one of those perky gym bunnies always engrossed in the current diet fad. At the moment, Michelle didn't 'do' carbohydrates and apparently never even had so much as a mouthful of cake or chocolate or ice-cream or anything sugar-filled or fun because of the terror that she would just let go, let rip, gorge herself until her thighs ballooned, or her bottom burst or the seams of her latest designer outfit exploded.